


Dominion

by synfy



Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Enemies to Lovers, Immortality, M/M, Pre-Slash, Siege of Jerusalem (1099), Temporary Character Death, The First Crusade, yknow the usual canon tags and warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:55:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26384488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/synfy/pseuds/synfy
Summary: The moment his feet touched the worn wood of the docks in Jaffa, he knew he couldn’t ignore that voice in the back of his head any longer. It ceased to be a voice, ceased to be an unspoken fear, and became a simple fact that he knew with absolute surety. Maybe this was what the Voice of God was like? Not an audible noise, not beautiful music nor incomprehensible cacophony, but a quiet knowledge deep in the heart. It was akin to confidence, or maybe dread, or maybe relief, or perhaps some mixture of all three.Nicolò di Genova would die here. He would never get back onto that ship to return to his home. He knew this with absolute surety.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Kudos: 30





	Dominion

**Author's Note:**

> The lyrics in this are from the songs Heaven, Rise Again, and Sin, all by Kamelot. They're good songs, and fitting, so I'd recommend listening to them if you feel like it. I'm basically just using the lyrics as scene breaks, though, so you don't have to.

_Look towards the sea tell me  
What do you see?  
Will you know what it is when you have found it?  
You searched high above and you searched far below  
But it still seems so far and you know it_

_/_

The sea around them was blue and calm when the port of Jaffa came into sight. It hadn’t been a particularly long journey, all things considered, just a handful of weeks at sea, but this was undoubtedly the furthest from home Nicolò had ever been. It felt strange, and heavy, being so close to this new land but not quite there yet. Like he could reach out and touch it, even as some small voice in the back of his head rebelled against that.

Nicolò shoved that dissenting voice down and scanned along the shore. He could see the men, bustling around, and it was like a strange parody of the ports he was used to back in Genova. It was far from the first time he’d seen Muslims in person, far from the first time anyone on this ship had, and this port didn’t objectively look all that different than other ports. But the air was different. The land was different. There were countless little things, all unnoticeable and irrelevant by themselves, that came together to make this port, in Jaffa, utterly strange compared to those of Genova.

He thought of his sister, how much she loved the notion of traveling. She’d hung around the ports with him whenever they could sneak away from their father, and go to watch all the ships come in. He hadn’t cared so much, personally, but he let her excitedly tell him what grand sights and adventures she imagined that were to be had by each crew. She’d want to know every detail of the crusade once he got back, he was sure. She’d cried so much when she’d heard where he was going.

The little voice of doubt started up again and Nicolò shoved it back down.

She’d cried because she was happy for him, of course. No longer would he be shut up in a a study, pouring over the psalms and hymns and innumerable other holy songs that made up a proper mass. Instead of studying to become a priest, he would get to go to the actual Holy Lands, and help retake them. Be absolved of all his sins, according to the Pope and his father. Privately, Nicolò thought that the only sin he had committed was disappointing his father. He still wasn’t clear on whether or not that counted as not honouring his parents.

When they finally reached the port itself, Nicolò was not one of the first off. He didn’t really help much to pull the ship in or secure it, but he didn’t feel too bad about that. He was on a boat with other Genovans, many who’d actually been on ships before. They knew what to do better than he did. He waited for a plank to be put down so that he could actually walk off the ship before he went to disembark.

The moment his feet touched the worn wood of the docks in Jaffa, he knew he couldn’t ignore that voice in the back of his head any longer. It ceased to be a voice, ceased to be an unspoken fear, and became a simple fact that he knew with absolute surety. Maybe this was what the Voice of God was like? Not an audible noise, not beautiful music nor incomprehensible cacophony, but a quiet knowledge deep in the heart. It was akin to confidence, or maybe dread, or maybe relief, or perhaps some mixture of all three.

Nicolò di Genova would die here. He would never get back onto that ship to return to his home. He knew this with absolute surety.

He looked at the proper shoreline, some ways to the south of the port, past the seawall, where the rolling blue ocean swells turned into soft brown mounds of the sandy waves of the desert. This land, dusty and muted, was nothing like the white sand and jewel-tones of Genova. But it was this ground, grey-brown and devoid of green, that would be stained with his blood.

_/  
Time- it dwindles away  
There's a clock on the wall  
And it seems to be calling your name  
But you can't run away  
He'll be right there behind you  
Reminding you it's not a game_

_/_

Once the ships they’d sailed in on were stripped of their supplies, the two brothers who were funding this voyage ordered the ships themselves to be stripped. It was kind of ironic, for Nicolò. Truly, if they fully dismantled the ships they’d sailed in on, then there was no chance of him returning to Genova on one of them. Fortunately, it was easy to put these dark thoughts out of his head.

The more experienced sailors, the ones who knew the anatomy of ships, took the lead in dismantling them. As they worked, the singing started. Nicolò had heard many of the songs before, when they’d still been out on the water, but he’d never been close enough to actually hear the words being sung or learn them himself. Now, when everyone was on the docks, working on roughly equal footing to carry wood away from the water and to a pile on the land, it was easy to learn the words and the tunes.

The work songs spread like fire through the entire company, half of the men completely tone-deaf in a way that made Nicolò’s ears hurt. That got better the more they sang, but there were a few who resolutely refused to find the right pitch. He couldn’t help wonder what an odd sight they must be presenting to the locals. A whole line of pale-faced men, tearing a pair of ships to pieces, chanting in a foreign tongue.

When their ships were nothing but scraps, Guglielmo Embriaco ordered them to prepare to march. They headed south along the coast, moving to Asqalan. Nicolò wasn’t sure why, since they’d all heard of the siege of Jerusalem that had just begun. The Holy City itself, and Embriaco wanted to go elsewhere. It was likely greed, Nicolò thought. Many of the cities that had been taken along the way to Jerusalem had been given over to the lords and generals to rule. Perhaps Embriaco had funded this venture in hopes of gaining land, as a way to appease his own family. The title of “Drunkard” isn’t generally gained by upstanding behaviour.

So, it was south they went, dragging the pieces of their ships behind them. It was slow, but morale was good when they left Jaffa. It was hot, but not unbearably so, though the sand was difficult to walk on. By the time they made camp the first night, Nicolò’s legs ached. Everyone’s did, actually, and Nicolò found the shared suffering made for instant camaraderie around a campfire.

The second day started with the expected soreness in his legs. He packed up his area, sharing grimaces with the men he’d made camp with in the dawn light. Someone kicked sand over the remains of their fire, and Nicolò almost stepped in it when he stumbled to his feet. They were marching in armor today, which Nicolò had mixed feelings about. On the one hand, if he wore his armor, then he didn’t have to carry it. On the other hand, his father had, disapprovingly, gifted him with his own supplies before he’d set sail. While every man in the company had a crossbow, bolts, chainmail, and the white-green tabard that marked them as part of Embriaco’s company, Nicolò also had a good longsword that he kept strapped to his back. He did know how to use it, and was glad to have it, but it _was_ devilishly heavy. At least having a helmet on might keep the sun out of his eyes, somewhat.

The second day of marching did become hotter than the first, or maybe it just seemed that way because of the armor. The sky was cloudless in way that unsettled Nicolò. The air was dry, so dry, and Nicolò couldn’t tell if he was sweating or not. His tongue felt stiff in his mouth and his throat hurt like he’d been screaming. The conversation among the other men with him became spotty, and he knew they were all feeling as badly as he was. Water was limited, and at first it was passed around with the reverence of the sacrament. After midday came and went, it was snatched almost from the mouths of whoever had it.

They made camp earlier that evening. Barely anyone spoke while camp was set up, but conversation sprung back up as the sun began to touch the horizon and it cooled somewhat. No one in Nicolò’s camp lit a fire that night, too hot and too tired. The next morning, he barely had anything in him to piss out before they started marching.

Just after noon on the third day, a ripple went through the company. Those at the front had spotted something on the horizon. An army of Saracens. Just like that, a controlled sort of chaos went through the company. Officers began barking orders, and men were scrambling everywhere. Nicolò ended up in the second line of crossbow men, behind several more rows of men with swords and a shieldwall.

He felt good about that, as they stared down their approaching opponents. He wasn’t bad with his sword, no, but he was a much better shot. This wouldn’t be his first fight, he told himself. Just his first battle. How different were they, really?

There was several minutes of waiting, silence, breathing. Then everything seemed to happen at once.

It was hard to think in the thick of battle. Arrows rained down on them, hitting against shields, slamming into armor, some catching flesh. Next to Nicolò, a man went down with one in his shoulder, but got back up a few seconds later, chainmail having saved him from more than a nasty bruise.

Then they returned fire. Many of their enemies were mounted, and the horses were easy targets. Nicolò shot down horse after horse, as though he were simply shooting rabbits in the forest. The horses and men slammed into the shieldwall, breaking through in some places, only for the horses to trip and spill both rider and intestines towards the waiting swordsmen.

Blood splashed everywhere, covering the sand and the men indiscriminately. Nicolò loosed bolt after bolt into the horde before him.

At some point, shooting horses turned into shooting men. Or, enemies. Their faces splattered with blood, twisted and dark, they barely seemed like men to Nicolò. There was blood in his own beard, blood of his brothers-in-arms and companions who’d been slaughtered by these Saracens.

By nightfall, the losses were too heavy to justify the non-existent progress that they’d made, and they were forced to retreat. Nicolò dragged himself back in a stumbling march with what was left of his company until they were far enough away that it was deemed safe to rest. He didn’t bother to clean the blood off of himself, simply collapsed into sand.

_ /  
I will conquer the beast and  _ _ I _ _ 'll swim the seven seas  
And my heart will still beat and  _ _ I _ _ 'll never give up  
I will walk desert plains and endure grueling pain  
And my heart will still beat and  _ _ I _ _ never give up _

_/_

They turned their march inland and headed towards Jerusalem. As bad as the march to Asqalan had been, this was worse. Away from the ocean, the air turned stagnant and hot as the winds died off. They didn’t remove their armor for fear of attack, and this took a heavy toll on everyone. Dehydrated under layers of linen and chainmail and plate, mourning the absence of those lost, still dragging the remnants of the ships that had carried them to this God-forsaken land, they trudged on. The hole left by those who had died manifested as stilted conversations when camp was made, and several nearly-silent days of marching.

Some days, the landscape barely seemed to change around them. It was all brown and gold sand, seared blue sky, and the scorched green of occasional shrubbery, nothing like the lush beauty of Genova. The sand was too fine, and it clung to everything. Faces, hair, mouth, armor. Nicolò was careful to keep his longsword clean and shining, but keeping his armor clean was a laughable dream. Even if he’d been able to clean all of the dust out of the individual chain links, his tabard was a lost cause.

By the time their marching carried them into a greener, hilly region where there were enough shallow lakes to actually wash, the blood that had gotten on the cloth on the way to Asqalan was baked in. The white parts had been stained to a muddy rust colour, wholly unattractive and stinking of iron and salt to boot. It felt goo to wash himself off, though, even if it only took a few minutes for the waters to become muddied from so many men trying to scrub off the better part of two week’s grime.

That night, Nicolò felt like he could relax for the first time. Morale was higher than it had been since they’d left Jaffa, and there were smiles around the campfire that night. Men told stories of their families back home, instead of rumours about the unholy powers of Saracens or vows of violence and revenge. Nicolò even joined in on that, sharing a tale of the single time he’d tried to sneak a girl up to his bedroom and been caught by his father. It had been embarrassing and nerve-wracking at the time, and he’d not tried it again. But now, around the fire, the story got him a wave of laughter and claps on his back.

He was in a good mood when he fell asleep that night, and he fell into a deep sleep for the first time since the battle on the road to Asqalan. Maybe it was because of that, in a cruel twist of fate, that he actually dreamt that night.

In his dreams, he was back on the battlefield. All around him, the dead eyes of his comrades, his brothers-in-arms, stared up at him from sand that was turned brown and stinking with their blood. High above, carrion birds filled the sky with their screams. Dark-eyed Saracens came at him, unholy fury and savagery on their faces, hacking at him until he managed to get away, only to have another one spring up to take the first one’s place. He killed and was killed over and over, and the dream refused to end. The face of his victim and killer was a shifting, blurry thing, with only the flash of white teeth and silver metal clear in his mind. At some point, the battle ceased to be a battle and became just a bloody fight.

_/  
Heaven is a heartbeat away _

_For your dreams of tomorrow_

_Could very well end today_

_/_

The first thing that Nicolò had noticed about Jerusalem was the smell. He’d gotten whiffs of it before, on the road to Asqalan and in brief snatches on the wind, but he’d never smelt it so strongly before. It was the stench of humanity, ever-present in civilisation, but left to fester and grow potent in a siege. Here, there was little wind to carry it away, so the rankness of excrement and the saltiness of rotting flesh hung over the land like a miasma.

Nicolò had never experienced a siege firsthand before, not really, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew how sieges worked, by starving a city into weakness and stagnation. He knew of the kind of discomfort they must provoke among the wealthy in the city, and the desperation among the poor. Not all of the smell came from the encampments of soldiers surrounding the walls. Some of it came from within, too. It was impossible to tell how much, though.

(If he thought about it too long, whenever the smell swept over his bedroll at night, he’d remember that there were women and children in that city, not only soldiers. He struggled not to think about it too long.)

Embriaco set them to work on the remnants of the ships that they’d dragged behind them through the desert, turning the piles of scrap wood and nails into towers to overcome the walls. They built a pair, both impressive feats. They were tall enough to reach over the walls of Jerusalem, set on three pairs of wheels, with solid sides to protect them from arrows. The tops had a platform for archers to stand on, and an arm to reach over the walls. There were also dozens of ladders to scale the walls and the towers, and Nicolò thought he saw a iron-capped battering ram being constructed somewhere else in the camp.

Objectively, Nicolò knew they managed to put everything together with remarkable haste, but it seemed to take forever. The other soldiers had been here for long enough that food and water had begun to run short for the entire camp, and that was only made worse by long days of difficult labour. During that time, sporadic bursts of crossbow fire would erupt from the walls, and things would pause for a short while to return fire. Word reached them every few days that someone else in one of the many, many different lord’s camps around the entire city had gotten impatient and tried to scale the walls. None of these attempts worked, of course, so they continued building.

After three long weeks, everything was finally built. Nicolò barely got any sleep the final night. When dawn came the next day, the camp was a hushed buzz of activity. As soon as their enemies realised what was happening, when the battering ram and the towers began their march towards the walls, they unleashed a furious response of arrows. Outside the walls of the Holy City, Nicolò experienced Hell on Earth.

Somehow, he found himself atop one of the towers, crouched behind the crown with a crossbow. Men rushed past him, crossing the arm to face down men on the top of the wall. Arrows flew past him, off into empty air, bouncing off the wooden tower, or embedding in flesh. He could barely tell friend from foe in the desperate melee where the arm of the tower met the wall, so he instead fired at the other archers further down the wall. Once enough men made it onto the wall, it didn’t matter anymore. They swept along, killing or throwing off the heathen soldiers, and panic spread through the ranks of the Godless.

He got up and ran onto the wall himself, bringing out his longsword, and threw himself into the fray. He ran along the walls, towards the towers where swords still clashed. In a group of men in tabards and chainmail, they forced their way down the tower, slashing through men and shoving bodies down stairs. Nicolò was at the back of the rushing throng, his longsword too long to be useful in such close quarters. When they made it out onto the streets, though, the group loosened enough that he could properly fight. He’d never understood the concept of bloodlust before.

(Later, much later, Nicolò would look back at this day and realise what he’d done. Realise how he’d participated in an absolute massacre, a blind slaughter of thousands.)

He barely paused to recognise his enemies, simply swung his sword with blind joy. His blood was singing in his veins, he could feel the pounding of his heart in his ears. Bodies came at him, wielding curved swords, kitchen knives, bare fists.

His sword cleaved through flesh and struck bone time after time. His whole world narrowed down to the movement of his blade and whatever was in front of him. He didn’t need to think, only acted and reacted. His feet carried him effortlessly, moving in perfect harmony as if on their own. _  
_ Nicolò turned a corner, blood dripping into his eyes, and found more people. The first of them was dead before he’d even properly registered the others. The second one fell with a scream, and the third one turned just in time to catch Nicolò’s sword in their neck. But when he went to pull his longsword from the other’s neck, there was a strange jerk. He suddenly wasn’t moving like he was supposed to. His world narrowed down to the face of the person, the man, that was in front of him. He looked down to find something dark coming out of his chest. For an instant, he didn’t know what it was. Then, the pain hit.

The sword in his chest shone with blood, his blood, in the dusk light. As he stared at it, the blade jerked out of his chest. His body moved with it, more pain erupting in his chest. The haze of bloodlust broken, he could feel every ache along each of his limbs, every arrow bruise under his chainmail, every slash along his arms. It was all overshadowed by the throbbing, sharp, wrenching pain in his chest.

His arm fell to his side, and he heard a faint clatter as his longsword fell to the blood-drenched cobblestones. His opponent’s blade also hit the ground, and both men stared at each other. Nicolò saw the world waver, though he couldn’t feel his body swaying. The dark eyes and bright-white grimace of his victim and killer was the only thing that remained in focus as he fell backwards.

Nicolò di Genova was dead before his head hit the stones.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [moonlightinwater](www.moonlightinwater.tumblr.com) on tunglr dot hell, so come on over and watch me spam post about the old guard if you want. Or yell at me about it on there. Or yell at me about it on here! Whatever strikes your fancy.


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